A SHOCKED postal workers' leader warned today that services in North Yorkshire will suffer through Consignia proposals to cut up to 30,000 jobs nationwide.

And he said he feared the company might try to close the York sorting office as part of a major rationalisation.

Paul Clays, spokesman for the Communication Workers Union in the York postcode area, spoke out after Consignia chief executive John Roberts revealed yesterday to a committee of MPs that up to 30,000 jobs could be axed over the next 18 months.

Mr Roberts said the move might be needed to reduce costs in the face of increasing competition and huge losses.

The staffing reductions have been forced on Consignia by tumbling profits, which saw the company record a £281 million loss in the first six months of this year, with operating losses quadrupling to £100 million.

Mr Roberts blamed much of the company's decline in profitability on the uncertain economic climate and the costs and delays caused by chaos on the railways since the Hatfield crash.

Consignia hopes the job cuts can be met through natural wastage.

But Mr Clays - who said the news had come as an "absolute shock" to postal staff in the York area - said he feared compulsory redundancies would be threatened. But any such proposals could be met by strike action to protect the service.

He claimed it was "absolute nonsense" that 30,000 jobs could be shed without hitting the service to the public.

"People will get their mail late , and won't get it the next day or even the day after that," he claimed.

"Everyone is working all the time. We are not carrying 30,000 people sitting on their backsides all day."

A spokesman for Consignia in Yorkshire said he could not comment on the impact of the job losses in this region, or on the position of the York sorting office.

But he stressed that it should be possible to achieve the job reductions through natural wastage, with 20,000 people leaving work every year. And he said 30,000 was the maximum figure for job losses. "It could be much less," he said.

Shadow trade secretary John Whittingdale said it had been an "extraordinary way" to make the announcement.

Consignia's unique status as a publicly owned company with freedoms to act like a private firm were partly to blame for the current situation, he said.

Updated: 10:31 Wednesday, December 12, 2001